The first question everyone asks
What would it actually cost you?
Put in what your home is worth and find out. No measure has been referred to the ballot yet, so the honest answer is a rate — what one mill costs you per year. The arithmetic below is exact, and you can check every step of it.
Use the actual value from your county Notice of Valuation — not your assessed value, and not what you paid.
Each mill would cost you
$42.30 per year
That’s $3.53 a month, per mill. Your school-district assessed value is $42,300.
What that means at different measure sizes
These rows are illustrative. No measure exists yet. They show what historically discussed amounts would cost the home value you entered.
| Scenario | New revenue | Approx. mills | Your cost per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Illustrative — $1 million | $1.0M | 0.92 | — |
| Roughly what it would take to match Academy 20 per pupil | $2.4M | 2.20 | — |
| The 2022 measure that failed narrowly | $5.6M | 5.16 | — |
What this does not include
This is the school-district operating portion only. It does not include county, town, fire, library or special-district levies, and it does not include any bond measure. If you qualify for the Senior or Disabled Veteran property tax exemption, your actual bill will be lower than what this shows.
How the math works
Colorado does not tax your home’s full value. It taxes a percentage of it, called the assessed value. For tax year 2026 there are two different residential rates — and most people don’t know this:
- 7.05% for school districts
- 6.8% for county, town, fire and other local governments
The 10% actual-value reduction you may have heard about — capped at $70,000 — applies only to the local government side. It does not reduce your school-district assessed value. So for a school measure, the calculation is simply:
actual value × 7.05% = school-district assessed value
assessed value × (mills ÷ 1,000) = what you pay per year
On a $600,000 home: $600,000 × 0.0705 = $42,300 assessed. One mill on that is $42.30 a year.
Assessment rates per Colorado SB24-233 and HB24B-1001, as published in county assessor guidance for tax years 2025–2027. The 2026 school-district rate is stated as 7.05%, subject to a 0.1 point reduction if statewide actual-value growth exceeded 5%. Confirm your own figures with the El Paso County Assessor.